She Was Afraid To Run Alone. So She Built A Running Community

About eight years ago, under the cover of the morning darkness, a stranger in a car approached Adry Prado during her weekly training run in South Austin.

“He said, ‘Hey, get in the car!’” Prado remembers.

Feeling paralyzed by fear, Prado kept running. But looking back, she says, she regrets she didn’t call the cops.

“I froze,” she said.

It was a feeling that inspired Prado to found Rise and Run South Austin, a running club dedicated to safety in numbers. After posting on her neighborhood’s Nextdoor page for weeks, she eventually formalized the group in 2018.

It didn’t come easy at first.

“The first questions I would ask to anyone who showed up with me was, ‘Do you have a knife or a gun? No? OK, good.’ I would say, ‘OK, now you run in front of me and I will be right behind,'” said Prado, 47, who’s a full-time mom, part-time cake decorator and run coach.

Eight years later, Prado’s efforts have continued in force and expanded to include a whole ecosystem of runs for every day of the week, for people from all corners of Central Texas: from Austin to Buda to Kyle and San Marcos.

There are Tuesday track workouts, Thursday tempo runs and Saturday long runs to Mount Bonnell. Sundays usually occupy community runs, or some form of activation with a local business.

Related: How Founders Running Club Moves Fast And Breaks The Mold

A Monumental First for Rise and Run South Austin

Not long ago, Prado reached out to Austin City Council Member Vanessa Fuentes with a request: Could you recognize the work our group has done over these eight years to make running safer for women?

The result was a proclamation on July 3, the same day Rise and Run was founded eight years ago, to recognize “Safety in Numbers Day.”

“There are a lot of people out here who are trying to run for a lot of different reasons: kids, work, life,” Prado said. “We all have a life, and we all want to run.”

Looking back, Prado didn’t intend for the running group to grow as much as it did. But she’s also glad she didn’t let one bad moment decide her future on the roads.

Even today, women’s safety while running is a present concern.

“I think fear can be good and bad,” she says. “Fear can make you stop and not want to do anything. But fear is also what made me get out there and look for people. I don’t like when fear stops you from doing what you love to do.”

Rise and Run South Austin Wednesday leader Mike Luna (right) speaks with the group before the run. Photo Credit: Cory Mull/Austin Fit Magazine

A runner readies for the Wednesday run at 5:30 a.m. at Fleet Feet Circle C. Photo Credit: Cory Mull/Austin Fit Magazine

Behind the Formation of Rise and Run South Austin

Prado and her husband, Lino Ramirez, are lifelong runners and parents who have developed a love for training and racing. They’ve been married for 25 years.

Running hasn’t always been in Prado’s life, but it has for Ramirez (he’s previously paced the Austin and San Antonio Marathons). Looking to bond with her husband one day over a decade ago, she took on the sport.

“He made me run three miles,” Prado said. “I couldn’t finish. He had to pick me up.”

They eventually had kids and now have a 20-year-old at the University of Utah and a 23-year-old with disabilities who’s enrolled at Austin Community College. The reason they’ve needed to train separately is for practical purposes: someone always had to be home to take care of their child with Down syndrome.

It’s meant that they’ve always put him first. So, when Prado was approached in the morning that day eight years ago, she wasn’t sure if she would ever run again. How could she reasonably expect to train with her husband and leave their child at home?

Fortunately, Prado’s run club was the solution. Today, there are people like Mike Luna, who leads the Wednesday group at Fleet Feet in Circle C. His brother Tino usually joins him on the 5K route up and down Escarpment Boulevard. “This is a family thing,” he says.

There are leaders for most days of the week, along with ambassadors like Norma Jaimes, a regular who appears at several runs. There are relative newbies like Sandy Durrance, whose family moved to Austin last summer from Georgia.

When Durrance was searching for a run group to join, she envisioned a place that was respectful of her time and place in life: as a mother who had responsibilities but still wanted to train out on the roads. For her, that became the 5 a.m. long run on Saturdays.

“I love this group, because they will wait for you at the stop lights even if they aren’t going your pace,” she says. “They’ll say, ‘Is anyone else behind you?’ That itself made me feel comfortable, because they were always concerned with who was in front and behind.”

Being Vigilant About Safety

In today’s day and age, it’s safer than ever to run. With the advent of smartphones, GPS trackers and Ring cameras, there’s a certain comfort in technology. However, none of that discounts the feeling most women still feel on the roads or trails.

A study by adidas found that 91-percent of women (out of a 9,000-person poll that included both men and women) were concerned for their safety while running, while 51-percent felt at risk of being attacked. Women deal with sexual harassment, blatant disrespect and fears for safety, which leads to them taking precautions before heading out the door.

Even Rise and Run isn’t immune to those fears.

Prado said that sometime not long ago on a Saturday long run, “we had somebody chasing one of our runners in front of the group,” she said.

The group called the City of Austin police, which then dispatched patrol cars up and down Congress Avenue.

The moment, Prado said, only reinforced the importance of safety in numbers.

“We shouldn’t have to worry about all this stuff,” she said. “We should be able to go out and run and not carry all of this.”

Long ago, that moment would have placed a singular burden on Prado.

But now, with the right institution in place, the roads have allies. It’s a reminder of why Rise and Run South Austin is still here today.

“We want to encourage our community to help each other be safe,” Prado said. “We believe in safety in numbers. It makes a difference.”

Related: A Decade Of Showing Up For Runners in Central Texas

The Rise and Run South Austin group meets outside Fleet Feet Seaholm on a recent weekday morning. Photo Credit: Submitted

Rise and Run South Austin takes a photo before heading off on their weekly Wednesday run at Fleet Feet Circle C. Photo Credit: Cory Mull/Austin Fit Magazine